Malayalam was derived from Middle Tamil in the
6th century, of which Modern Tamil was also derived.[8]
An alternative theory proposes a split in more ancient times.[8]
Before Malayalam came into being, Old Tamil was used in
literature and courts of a region called Tamilakam, a famous example being Silappatikaram. The oldest
literature works in Malayalam, distinct from the Tamil
tradition, is dated certainly to the 11th century, perhaps to the
9th century.[8]
For cultural purposes Malayalam and Sanskrit formed a language known as Manipravalam, where
both languages were used in an alternating style. Malayalam is the
only among the major Dravidian languages without diglossia. This means, that
the Malayalam which is spoken doesn't differ from the written
variant, while the Kannada and Tamil languages use a classical type for
the latter.

Etymology

The term "Malayalam" comes from the words mala
meaning mountain and alam meaning people in old
Tamilland
or locality.[9] Hence
malayali means Mountain's people who lived beyond
the Western
Ghats, and Malayalam the language that was spoken
there. Malayalam started was a dialect of Tamil spoken by the Chera
people (Chera dynasty) one among the three
tripartite ancient Tamil Kingdoms.Another etymology is that it
comes from mala (Mountain) and azham (Ocean) -
referring to the Sahya mountains and Arabian Sea that bound Kerala. Malayazham later became
Malayalam.

The word "Malayalam" is spelled as a palindrome in English. However, it is not a
palindrome in its own script, for three reasons: the
third a is long and should properly be transliterated
aa or ā (an a with a macron) while the other a’s are short;
the two l consonants represent different sounds, the first
l being dental ([l̪], Malayalam ല,
Roman l) (although the consonant chart below lists that
sound as [alveolar]) and the second retroflex ([ɭ], Malayalam ള, Roman ḷ); and the final m is
written as an anusvara,
which denotes the same phoneme /m/ as in the initial m in
this case, but the two m’s are spelled differently (the
first m is a normal maമ with an inherent vowela, while the
last m ം is a
pure consonant).

Evolution

The language belongs to the family of Dravidian
languages. Robert Caldwell, in his book A Comparative
Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Languages states that
Malayalam branched from classical Tamil that over time
gained a large amount of Sanskrit vocabulary and lost the personal
terminations of verbs.[10]

Together with Tamil, Toda, Kannada and Tulu, Malayalam belongs to the
southern group of Dravidian languages. Some believe
Proto-Tamil, the common stock of ancient Tamil and Malayalam,
apparently diverged over a period of four or five centuries from
the ninth century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a
language distinct from Proto-Tamil. As the language of scholarship
and administration, Proto-Tamil which was written in Tamil-Brahmi script
and Vatteluttu
later,greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later
the irresistible inroads the Namboothiris made into
the cultural
life of Kerala, the Namboothiri-Nair dominated social and political setup, the
trade relationships with Arabs, and the invasion of Kerala by the Portuguese, establishing
vassal states accelerated the assimilation of many Roman, Semitic and Indo-Aryan features into Malayalam
at different levels spoken by religious communities like Muslims, Christians, Jews and Jainas.

T.K. Krishna Menon, in his book A Primer of Malayalam
Literature describes four distinct epochs concerning the
evolution of the language:[11]

Karintamil (3100 BCE - 100 BCE): Malayalam from this period is
represented by the works of Kulashekara Alvar and Pakkanar. There
is a strong Tamil element, and Sanskrit has not yet made an
influence on the language.

Old Malayalam (100 BCE - 325 CE): Malayalam seems to have been
influenced by Sanskrit as there are numerous Sanskrit words in the
language. There are personal terminations for verbs that were
conjugated according to gender and number.

Middle Malayalam (325 CE - 1425 CE): Malayalam from this time
period is represented by works such as Ramacharitram.
Traces of the adjuncts of verbs have disappeared by this period.
The Jains also seemed to have encouraged the study of the
language.

Modern Malayalam (1425 CE onwards): Malayalam seems to have
established itself as a language separate from classical Tamil and
Sanskrit by this point in time. This period can be divided into two
categories: from 1425 CE to 1795 CE, and from 1795 CE, onwards.
1795 CE is the year the British gained complete control over
Kerala.

Development of
literature

The earliest written record resembling Malayalam is the
Vazhappalli inscription (ca. 830 CE). The early literature of
Malayalam comprised three types of composition: Malayalam
Nada,Tamil Nada and Sanskrit Nada.

Classical songs known as Naadan Paattu

Manipravalam
of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing
of Sanskrit with Malayalam.Niranam poets Manipravalam Madhava
Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar wrote Manipravalam
poetry in the 14th century.The changed political situation in the
14th century after the invasion of Malik Kafur in 1310 led to the decline of
Tamil dynasties leading to the dominance of people with Prakrit and
Sanskrit heritage, the languages of Ahichatra in Uttarkhand, the original
home town of Aryans and Nagavanshi people.

The folk song rich in native elements

Malayalam
poetry to the late twentieth century betrays varying degrees of
the fusion of the three different strands. The oldest examples of
Pattu and Manipravalam, respectively, are Ramacharitam and
Vaishikatantram, both of the twelfth century.

By the end of 18th century some of the Christian missionaries from Kerala started
writing in Malayalam but mostly travelogues,Dictionaries and
Religeous books.Varthamana Pusthakam (1778), written by Parammekkal
Thoma Kathanar a travelogue. Church Mission Society which
started a seminary at Kottayamat 1819 also started a press which
printed Malayalam books in 19th century.Malayalam and Sanskrit were increasingly
studied by Christians of Kottayam and by the end of 19th century
Malayalam replaced Syriac as language of Liturgy in the church.

Phonology

For the consonants and vowels, the IPA is given, followed by the
Malayalam character and the ISO 15919 transliteration.

Vowels

*/ɨ̆/ is the saṁvr̥tōkāram, an epenthentic vowel in
Malayalam. Therefore, it has no independent vowel letter (because
it never occurs at the beginning of words) but, when it comes after
a consonant, there are various ways of representing it. In medieval
times, it was just represented with the symbol for /u/, but later on it was just completely omitted
(that is, written as an inherent vowel). In modern times, it is
written in two different ways - the Northern style, in which a chandrakkala is used, and the Southern or
Travancore style, in
which the diacritic for a /u/ is attached to the preceding consonant and a
chandrakkala is written above.

*/a/ (phonetically central: [ä]) and /ə/ are both represented as basic or "default"
vowels in the abugida script (although /ə/ never occurs word-initially and therefore
does not make use of the letter അ), but they are distinct
vowels.

Malayalam has also borrowed the Sanskrit diphthongs of /äu/ (represented in Malayalam as ഔ, au) and
/ai/ (represented in Malayalam as ഐ, ai),
although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords.
Traditionally (as in Sanskrit), four vocalic consonants (usually
pronounced in Malayalam as consonants followed by the saṁvr̥tōkāram, which is not
officially a vowel, and not as actual vocalic consonants) have been
classified as vowels: vocalic r (ഋ, /rɨ̆/, r̥), long
vocalic r (ൠ, /rɨː/, r̥̄),
vocalic l (ഌ, /lɨ̆/, l̥) and long
vocalic l (ൡ, /lɨː/, l̥̄). Except
for the first, the other three have been omitted from the current
script used in Kerala as there are no words in current Malayalam
that use them.

The unaspirated alveolar plosive stop used to have a separate
character but it has become obsolete because it only occurs in
geminate form (when geminated it is written with a റ below another
റ) or immediately following other consonants (in these cases, റ or
ററ is usually written in small size underneath the first
consonant). To see how the archaic letter looked, find the
Malayalam letter in the row for there.

The alveolar
nasal used to have a separate character but this is now
obsolete (to see how it looked, find the Malayalam letter in the
row for nhere) and the sound is now
almost always represented by the symbol that was originally used
only for the dental
nasal. However, both sounds are extensively used in current
colloquial and official Malayalam, and there is no distinction made
in the spelling.

The letter ഫ represents both /pʰ/, a native phoneme, and /f/, which only occurs in adopted words.

Writing
system

A public notice board in Malayalam written using Malayalam
script. Malayalam language possesses official recognition in
the state of Kerala, Lakshadweep and Puducherry

Historically, several scripts were used to write Malayalam.
Among these scripts were Vattezhuthu, Kolezhuthu and Malayanma scripts. But it was the Grantha script,
another Southern Brahmi variation, which gave rise
to the modern Malayalam script. It is syllabic in
the sense that the sequence of graphic elements means that
syllables have to be read as units, though in this system the
elements representing individual vowels and consonants are for the
most part readily identifiable. In the 1960s Malayalam dispensed
with many special letters representing less frequent conjunct
consonants and combinations of the vowel /u/ with different
consonants.

Malayalam language script consists of 53 letters including 16
vowels and 37 consonants.[12] The
earlier style of writing is now substituted with a new style from
1981. This new script reduces the different letters for typeset
from 900 to fewer than 90. This was mainly done to include
Malayalam in the keyboards of typewriters and computers.

Dialects and external
influences

Variations in intonation patterns,
vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and phonological elements are
observable along the parameters of region, religion, community,
occupation, social stratum, style and register. Influence of Sanskrit is very prominent in
formal Malayalam used in literature. Malayalam has a substantially
high amount of Sanskrit loan words.[13] Loan
words and influences also from Hebrew, Syriac and Ladino abound in the Jewish Malayalam
dialects, as well as English, Portuguese, Syriac and Greek in the Christian dialects, while
Arabic and
Persian elements predominate in the Muslim dialects. This Muslim dialect known as Mappila Malayalam is used in the Malabar
region of Kerala. Another Muslim dialect called Beary bashe is used in
the extreme northern part of Kerala.

The regional dialects of Malayalam can be divided into thirteen
dialect areas.[14] They
are as follows:

Words adopted from
Sanskrit

When words are adopted from Sanskrit, their endings are usually
changed to conform to Malayalam norms:

Nouns

Masculine Sanskrit
nouns ending in a short "a" in the nominative singular change their ending
to "an". For example, Kr̥ṣṇa -> Kr̥ṣṇan. The "an" reverts to an "a" before
masculine surnames, honorifics, or titles ending in "an" and
beginning with a consonant other than "n" - E.g. Krishna Menon,
Krishna Kaniyaan etc., but Krishnan Ezhutthachan. Surnames ending
with "ar" or "aL" (where these are plural forms of "an" denoting
respect) are treated similarly - Krishna Pothuval, Krishna Chakyar,
but Krishnan Nair, Krishnan Nambiar. "an" also reverts to "a"
before Sanskrit surnames like "Varma(n)", "Sarma(n)", or "Gupta(n)"
(rare) - e.g. Krishna Varma, Krishna Sharman. If a name is a
compound of multiple names, only the last name in the compound
undergoes this transformation - e.g. Krishnadevan.

Feminine words ending in a long "ā" or "ī" are changed so that
they now end in a short "a" or "i", for example Sītā -> Sīta and Lakṣmī -> Lakṣmi. However, the long vowel still
appears in compound words like Sītādēvi or Lakṣmīdēvi. Some vocative case forms of both Sanskrit and
native Malayalam words end in ā or ī, and there are also a small
number of nominative ī endings that have not been shortened - a
prominent example being the word Śrī,

Masculine words ending in a long "ā" in the nominative singular
have a "vŭ" added to them, for example Brahmā -> Brahmāvŭ. This
is again omitted when forming compounds.

Words whose roots are different from their nominative singular
forms - for example, the Sanskrit root of "Karma" is actually "Karman"- are also changed.
The original root is ignored and "Karma" (the form in Malayalam
being "Karmam" because it ends in a short "a") is taken as the
basic form of the noun when declining.[15]

Sanskrit words describing things or animals rather than people
which end in a short "a" take an additional "m" in Malayalam. For
example, Rāmāyaṇa -> Rāmāyaṇam. "Things and animals" and "people"
are not always differentiated based on whether or not they are
sentient beings - for example Narasimha becomes Narasimham and not
Narasimhan whilst Ananta becomes Anantan even though both are
sentient. This can be explained by saying that "Ananta" can also be
a man's name and does not necessarily have to refer to the Hindu serpent-god, whereas "Simha"
actually means lion and therefore must be of the neuter
gender.

Nouns ending in short vowels like "Viṣṇu", "Prajāpati" etc stay the
same.

Along with these tatsama
borrowings, there are also many tadbhava words in common use. These were
borrowed into Malayalam before it became distinct from Tamil. As
the language did not then accommodate Sanskrit phonology as it now
does, words were changed to conform to the Old Tamil phonological
system. For example: Kr̥ṣṇa ->
Kaṇṇan.[16]

Malayalam also has been influenced by Portuguese, as is evident
from the use of words like mesa for a small table, and
janala for window.[17]

Legends

Ezhuthachan is
considered the father of Malayalam literature. He was born at Tirur
in the Malabar area of Kerala, where there is now a monument to
him. A.R. Rajarajavarma is the man who gave grammatical rules to
Malayalam. His monument and burial place is at Mavelikkara in the
Central Travancore area of Kerala.

^ Zachariah, K. C. &
Rajan, S. Irudaya (2008), Kerala Migration Survey
2007 (PDF), Department of Non-resident Keralite Affairs,
Government of Kerala, p. 48. This is the number of emigrants from
Kerala, which is closely related to but different from the actual
number of Malayalam speakers.

From Wikitravel

Malayalam belongs to the Dravidian language
family, and is mostly spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and Lakshadweep. Around 36 million people uses
this language, and it is one of the 22 official languages of
India.